Advanced communications services that permit the reconnection of telephone and multimedia calls during setup and/or after the calls are established, are known in the art and have been successfully deployed to provide subscribers with services that are currently in demand. These advanced communications services are provided using a variety of equipment in a variety of configurations.
For example, a virtual switching point or an intelligent signal transfer point can be used as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 6,226,289 to permit the disconnection of a leg of a call path and the subsequent establishment of a different leg for the call in accordance with a subscriber request. There are other mechanisms for effecting similar services using specially provisioned service switching points (SSPs) (for example, with advanced intelligent network (AIN) enabled SSPs), intelligent peripherals, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications equipment, and inter-exchange carrier network equipment.
However, carrier networks have evolved to include a complex of different interconnected communications networks with gateways that permit calls to originate in one-type network and terminate in another or traverse another type of network which is different from the network in which the call originated and/or terminated. Although the services described above permit reconfiguration of calls within a given type of network, efficient utilization of complex interconnected telecommunications networks requires a larger view of calls to permit efficient utilization of network resources across different types of networks.
With the increasing load on telecommunications equipment, there is a need for improved efficiency of resource utilization in communications networks switching calls across interconnected carrier networks of different types.